Tag Archives: politics

“Gambling with World War III”

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President Donald Trump really screwed the pooch on this one. In a public Oval Office meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump and his Vice President JD Vance ambushed Zelenskyy and blew up any hope of a peace that serves the Ukrainian people.

Trump repeatedly berated the Ukrainian leader as “not ready for peace,” for having “disrespected” the United States and for “gambling with World War III.”

No. It’s those who back down in the face of Putin’s threats who are gambling with WWIII. It is ex-President Joe Biden (D), too many European government managers, and now Trump who repeatedly accede to Putin’s demands lest he strike at them, thereby giving credence to his threats. Never mind that every time one of those politicians dipped a toe over a Putin red line—authorizing transfers of weapons to which Putin objected, authorizing attacks inside Russia, and so on—Putin…didn’t strike.

It’s Vance’s timidity in rejecting Zelenskyy’s offer for him to go to the Ukrainian front, to go to places like Bucha, Staryi Bykiv, Zabuchchya, Vorzel, the Kharkiv region, and I add, in no particular order, places like Bakhmut, Mariupol (surely Putin would let him in if there’s really nothing to see there), Odesa, Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River, Berdiansk (again Putin would let him visit—wouldn’t he?), and any of the plethora of hospitals, schools, apartment buildings that the barbarian has deliberately attacked. Vance hid behind the claim that such tours are just propaganda events. He could have, instead, agreed to the visits on condition that he go unannounced with no notice of any particular places, and on arrival he go wherever he chose to go on the spur of the moment, a stipulation to which Zelenskyy would have agreed readily. But no. Vance said no. Terrifying to have one’s world view challenged by facts. That’s gambling with WWIII.

Zelenskyy, however, has returned to his nation, where he routinely visits the front and the scenes of battle and of civilian carnage. And, unfortunately, he returned empty handed courtesy of the hysteria and timidity of Trump and Vance.

Which raises the question: with this steady backing away in front of Putin by Trump and by central and western Europe (yes, yes, Europe’s other nations natter on about supporting Ukraine, but so far only with words and a trickle of materiel), and so after Russia has gained control over the bulk of Europe from those backings away, when Putin threatens us if we don’t accede to his demands, what will Trump do then, with no nation left to support us? Will he surrender us to the barbarian, too, as he’s demanding Zelenskyy surrender his nation to the barbarian at the outset of this shameful chain? That, too, is Trump gambling with WWIII.

That’s OK

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What sort of officer does our military establishment really need?

If President Trump and Elon Musk are serious about efficiency at the Pentagon, they might start by reforming SkillBridge. The program began as a well-intentioned effort to reduce veteran unemployment but now pays promising officers to leave the military for careers in investment banking and consulting.

The article’s authors expanded on this:

Junior officers are most likely to separate from the military after five or 10 years, after they have fulfilled their service requirements but before they feel the pull of a generous pension that begins vesting after 20 years. By providing an off-ramp into high-paying corporate jobs during this critical window, SkillBridge gives motivated officers an incentive to leave when they might otherwise have stayed.

The authors’ concerns are, for the most part, valid: the junior officers involved in operations and operations support—loggies and transporters—are the ones on the line, in contact or near contact with the enemy forces, and they’re the ones making the real-time tactical decisions necessary to execute their units’ larger orders regarding that battle and the environment surrounding that battle. These are the ones our military most needs in this context.

The authors concerns, though, are overbroad. While our military branches need some money manager officers, they don’t necessarily need “consultant” officers. What they do need, far more and in sufficient numbers, is what they can least afford to lose: those warfighting and direct warfighting support officers.

Yapping vs Action

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Republican Congressmen are starting to push back, ever so gently, against President Donald Trump’s (R) DOGE initiative and agency. They want more control, for themselves and for the several Department and Agency heads, over spending and Federal job cuts.

The calls come as some GOP lawmakers have pushed back against job cuts and characterized moves as haphazard, even as they largely agree with the broader goal of reducing government costs and inefficiencies.

That’s the difference between yapping and action. It’s necessary to be specific, to name programs and to name names, if actual action—cuts—are to be made. Republicans are exposing themselves now.

The House, with its alleged Republican majority, has passed its budget outline proposal, and already it does not include an aggregated ceiling for spending cuts that’s high enough to have room for all of the ones the DOGE effort is suggesting.

Certainly, it’s useful to not make cuts as sweeping as those on offer from DOGE and from Trump all at once; business and especially State budgets need time to adjust to the sharply reduced inflow of Federal dollars and outflow of ex-Federal employees, but that’s easily enough accommodated over a period of two years, so all the cuts proposed could be accomplished within a single Congressional session.

Just as certainly, the several constituencies of the several Republican Representatives have differing imperatives and needs—Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis’ (R, NY) constituents have different views of appropriate levels of cuts and where to make them than do Congressman Thomas Massie’s (R, KY), but in the Federal Congress, these Congressmen have national level constituents in addition to their local ones.

But, as ralflongwalker passed along to me:

You want to gore my ox? Oh, no!

Pick one, guys. Either you’re for spending cuts and reductions in the bloated Federal bureaucracy labor force, or you’re like a bunch of spendthrift Progressive-Democrats, just yapping differently.

An Alternative Approach to Bird Flu

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The current approach is, when a chicken in a chicken flock shows itself to be infected with the avian flu, kill the entire flock. That’s hard on a chicken farmer’s pocket book, since the government only reimburses the farmer for part of the cost of his loss (whether the government should reimburse the farmer for 100% or 0% of his loss is a separate question).

A current alternative is to vaccinate the chickens in the flock against the avian flu, but that’s a labor (and cost) intensive effort since the vaccine must be delivered by injection under the skin, chicken by chicken. Vaccines are under development that would allow mass vaccination, but those are a ways away.

There’s an alternative approach that isn’t, as far as I can tell, being looked into. I sympathize with one of the motives for the mass killing of entire flocks—no one wants to let the chickens die miserable deaths one by each. However, if the avian flu is allowed to run its course through the flock, 90% to 100% of infected birds die. That means that some number of those chickens survive their infection.

How about letting the avian flu run its course through some number of flocks and collecting up the survivors? Those chickens have shown themselves to be resistant to the avian flu. These should be bred among themselves to see if an avian flu-resistant population of chickens could be bred.

Or not, but it seems worth the try.

University Funding and University Overhead

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Maya Sen, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, thinks the Trump administration’s insistence on a cap of 15% for “indirect costs” as part of all Federal research grants to colleges/universities is too low for too many such institutions; such caps should continue to be negotiated school by school. She insists, for instance, that Harvard needs its 69% cut of research grants for its indirect cost.

An across-the-board 15% cap, she insists, ignores any individualized considerations, leaving schools with higher costs in the lurch. And, she claims,

University research depends on federal money—11% of Harvard’s operating revenue comes from such grants.

Her alternative:

There’s a better solution than a blanket cap. Universities could instead commit to addressing administrative bloat and shoring up research integrity—both reasonable points that academics themselves have flagged.

Couple things about that. One is Harvard’s $53.2 billion endowment with its 2024 return on investment of 9.6%—a fairly typical ROI for Harvard; even if its yearly ROI varies quite a bit around that figure. That’s a lot of money carefully not being used for the school’s operating revenue, or its grant “indirect costs.”

The other is that proposed Universities could instead commit to addressing administrative bloat and shoring up research integrity. We’ve seen already the value of those commitments—empty virtue-signaling words in far too many cases. See for instance, Sen’s own Harvard and its refusal to enforce its commitment to protect Jewish students from Harvard’s population of pro-terrorist “students.”

Bonus thing regarding those schools with higher costs about which Sen worries being left in the lurch: any lurch is solely the product of those “higher cost” schools. They can straightforwardly cull their administrative bloat and adjust their spending allocations to deal with remaining costs. All that would take is a modicum of courage, with backbone injected via reduced revenues caused by reduced Federal froo-froo included in any research grants.

No. The administration’s across-the-board 15% cap needs to be implemented.